Archive for January, 2010

A commenter has asked me twice to weigh in on Da’ath and what one might expects if one were to, well, go there.

Golly.

For those of you who don’t play Q-ball, let me just explain. There are ten Sephiroth, or emanations of deity. They are numbered, conveniently, one to ten, and leaving aside the Hebrew for now they are:

1. Crown

2. Wisdom

3. Understanding

4. Mercy

5. Severity

6. Beauty

7. Victory

8. Glory

9. Foundation

10. Kingdom

But then there’s an eleventh, called Da’ath, or knowledge. The thing is, da’ath isn’t listed in any of the traditional books on the Qabala, and the Sefer Yetzirah even goes out of its way to point out that there are ten sephiroth and not nine, ten and not eleven (which sounds like a Monty Python sketch but isn’t).

So what do we do with Da’ath? Why do we need it at all? I don’t. But some people like to put it there because of geometry.

Okay, get yourself a compass, the kind with a pointy bit and a pencil. Remember those from school? When kids used to stab you with it? Yeah, it has another use. Draw a circle. Now, on the edge of that circle, draw another circle. Make a chain of four of those, and circle the intersections. See a familiar pattern, you Qabalists you? But wait, where’s Malkuth, and what’s that extra sphere there?

That extra sphere is Malkuth. It’s also Da’ath.

To see why, it might help to understand the word Da’ath. Da’ath means knowledge, as in “The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” that gets Adam and Eve evicted from their party pad. It also is the root word for the verb “yada'” which means “to know” and, when used of a person, “to have sex with.” Seeing some links, here?

So what’ll you see if you try to go to Da’ath? Hard to say. If you buy the Bible, you’ll see an angel with a firey sword which flasheth every way. I’ve tried going there: I saw nothing. Dust, mostly. The rest of what I saw was clearly my own wishful thinking.

But if you want an angel and so forth, try Sandalphon. After all, he’s the angel of Malkuth, and Da’ath really is just the place where Malkuth used to live.

So last night for the full moon I did my usual invocation of the HGA. Today, I got three classes graded and a first draft of a poem done. But I also drank two large coffees. I think caffeine is the sacrament of my HGA.

And even though I prefer coffee to tea, being an American and all, I relate to this particular song quite a bit.

The Slacktivist has a clever post on the Saudi prohibition of sorcery, and the American protection of same. As is usually the case, I agree with much of it (although, of course, I do believe in magic).

It occurs to me that one of the great boons of living in the U.S. is that most people don’t believe in magic. After all, if they did, would they be confiscating my talismans at the airport?